In our day alcoholism remains a medical and major social scourge. For example, in France in 1984, the annual average consumption of pure alcohol per inhabitant was 13.5 liters. Specialists estimate that for France the number of persons intoxicated by alcohol is five million, of whom two million are alcoholic and three million are excessive drinkers.
The medical, social and economic repercussions of alcoholic toxicomania was figured at an overall cost of about 75 billion francs for the French community for 1982: costs of sickness linked to alcoholism, work accidents, traffic accidents, premature deaths, loss of days of work, etc. . .
At present, actual alcoholic detoxication treatments used proceed from the use of the Antabuse effect of disulfiram and the use of the Dr. Champeau method (daily injection of 15% hypertonic solution of magnesium sulfate), both of which methods which aim at inducing an intolerance or a lack of habit for alcoholic beverages.
These treatments are difficult to use: there is risk of intoxication and secondary accidents due to disulfiram, restricting treatment for magnesium sulfate injections and risks of intolerance accidents. Despite these drawbacks, these treatments on an average make it possible to obtain about 50% good quality withdrawals in patients treated.
Besides their medical drawbacks, these antialcoholic treatments impose very heavy and very costly material, physical, psychological and institutional constraints on the community and public health economy. Further, they cause the alcoholic patient to be taken over totally: his detoxication rests on a principle of medical authority who tends to replace the patient's will and on a principle of sanctions linked to displeasures induced by ingestion of alcohol.